Novelist and journalist Dave Hill

July 29, 2006

Boy Wonders: Chapter 4

“This fuckin’ heat will finish me off,” Lisa said, taking a shaded seat outside a sandwich bar. Her bump strained against the curved edge of the aluminium table. She had three months to go. The foetus was female and set to be called Carly or Michelle. Jamie sat and waited while Lisa squinted at the menu in the window. She turned to Jamie and said, “I thought I’d come and see you. Are you pleased?”

“Yeah,” Jamie replied, defensively.

“You coming this afternoon?”

“Yeah.”

“How you getting there?”

Jamie hadn’t thought of that. He shrugged: “With Mum and Dad, I suppose.” He felt pathetic the moment he said this. Of course it was they he’d be going to the graveyard with. He’d arranged to leave work early in order to be home by five, the time his father would have closed up at the garage.

A waiter materialised at Lisa’s elbow. “Just a Diet Coke please,” she said.

“Same for me,” said Jamie.

The waiter jotted and was about to leave when Lisa said, “Oh, and a chocolate doughnut please.”

“I got something to tell you,” Lisa said and looked at her little brother determinedly. She was twenty-three years-old, his senior by seven. He quite liked her, mostly. He’d never liked Sean.

“He was your age when he died, wasn’t he?” said Lisa. “Sixteen, yeah.”

“Yeah.”

“Cheered you up, have I?”

“Yeah.” Jamie grinned.

“Listen,” Lisa went on, conspiratorial suddenly. “I’ve been in this place, in Clerkenwell, they keep family records there: everyone’s date of birth and when they died. We was born in London but it says there Sean wasn’t. He was born in Nottingham.” She studied Jamie closely. “What do you think that means?”